Isabella Beecher
Hooker (1822-1907), was a
family friend of the Langdon's since Olivia's girlhood as well as
Mrs. Langdon's confident. In 1860, Isabella at a much older
thirty-eight years old, became Olivia's, a much younger fourteen
years old, roommate at the Gleason's Water Cure - a hydropathic
resort. Trombley describes her importance in the woman's rights
movement:

"A pivotal figure in the women's rights
movement, publishing polemic tracts and a book entitles
Womanhood: Its Sanctities and
Fidelities (1873). She also
sponsored and organized Hartford's first woman's suffrage convention
in 1869, and encouraged her husband to write a bill, eventually
passed in the Connecticut State Legislature, that granted tax paying
women their voting rights."(Trombley 137)

Trombley also explains that "The
two forceful personalities of Isabella Hooker and Clemens obviously
made for an explosive duo"(139) but that "Despite difficulties in
Clemens's and Isabella's relationship, the Clemenss always remained
supportive of Isabella's activities"(139), even financing one of her
suffragist conferences. In his autobiography, Clemens paid tribute to
her, writing "These brave women besieged the legislatures of the
land...[and] achieved a revolution...They broke the chains of their
sex and set it free"(141).